Near Sandogardy Pond

This afternoon saw a very rare occurance: Va joined me on a walk down to Sandogardy Pond. Jonathan came along too, as did Penny, in case there were any sticks along the way that needed fetching.

We walked along the creek that drains the pond (Cross Brook, or as I prefer to call it, Little Kohas Creek), and I plunged into the thicket and picked my way through the wetland to see if the false hellebore had bloomed. It had:

False hellebore (Veratrum viride)

I was also pleased to notice a stand of jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) and some buttercup (Ranunculus spp) growing where I had weeded out the garlic mustard this spring. Garlic mustard is an invasive alien that will take over an area if left unchecked.

Buttercup, species unknown

I didn’t stop to take many photos since I had the rare pleasure of Va’s company on the walk. People don’t like to hang around while I take three minutes to set up a shot. So instead, I just enjoyed her company and took note of the flowers and plants.

When we got home we walked around to the back door to give Penny some grass on which to wipe her feet (she took a dip in the pond, and that makes the sand from the beach and road stick to her all the better). At the end of the garage I spotted an area resident:

Garter snake!

I like having these around.

 

Back in Action

Today Beth and I walked to the Union Church. One of my caching friends had hidden a cache there, and it had somehow escaped my notice until now. I had been thinking about placing one there, but thinking about it and doing it are two different things. I thought. She did. And actually, she had hidden it exactly in the spot I had intended to.

On the way there, we saw a garter snake.

Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis)

I haven’t seen many snakes this summer. I think this is actually the only one I’ve seen.

Once we got to the Union Church and found the cache, we headed over to Beth’s first geocache. Not so we could see the cache (but we did check on it), but so that I could check up on a shrub I had marked there last winter. I marked it by tying a length of yarn to it so that I could identify it when it had leaves. I find it funny that I marked it on the winter solstice and checked it on the autumn equinox. Pure coincidence! Here it is with leaves:

Marked Shrub

I still don’t know what it is, but I’ll dig through my books in a little while. If you look closely, you can see the blue yarn marker right in the center of the frame behind some of the leaves.

While we were out that way, we stopped by Sandogardy Pond for a few minutes. Then we headed home again. After I caught my breath, I put the roof rack on my car and loaded up my newly repaired canoe. David was spending the day with some friends, and I couldn’t talk Beth into coming with me, so I went alone.

Topside

I paddled it around the pond in a counterclockwise direction. For some reason, I always paddle around this pond counterclockwise. Maybe because that gets me to the wilder side of the pond more quickly.

I found a bullhead lily (Nuphar lutea) still in bloom.

Bullhead Lily (Nuphar lutea)

And several fragrant water lilies (Nymphaea odorata).

Fragrant Water Lily (Nymphaea odorata)

I soon found myself at the north end of the pond where the leaves were beginning to redden. Autumn equinox indeed.

Paddling north

When I took the boat out I realized that I had failed to tie the grab loops onto the ends. In Virginia, that would have been illegal, and it may well be here as well. I should look into that. I’ll need to drill the tie holes out again, as I covered them with fiberglass during the repair. It will be easy to do – I just need to do it!

 

Northern Water Snake

Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

I took a picture of this wood frog (Rana sylvatica) on Tuesday. It apparently has an injured right eye, but I didn’t notice that until I downloaded the photo to my computer and zoomed in on the detail (I do that the assess image quality). Poor little guy!
Update: Maybe he just has mud in his eye?

I was out in the yard trying to decide how realistically I’d be able to teach the edible wild plants honor here at my house. It wasn’t looking that great if I got a big crowd of people. I still have blueberries and the blackberries are just coming in, but I need three berries. The wintergreen is in flower now, there just aren’t many berries out there. The partridge berries are still very unripe, as are the autumn olive and dew berries. So I can only manage two berries here right now. On top of that, all the hazelnuts I had seen earlier in the summer have been decimated:

Robbed!

Samuel Thayer, in Nature’s Garden holds that people can get to the hazels before the animals do – you just have to stay on top of them. Well, I’m going to have to contest that. I have been checking on them daily, and the ones I can still find are still not ripe. Maybe Thayer doesn’t have chipmunks. In fact, on Tuesday I picked one that I considered unripe and buried it in the mud (Thayer’s recommendation – this softens the prickly hull and makes it easier to get the nut out). When I did this, I counted about a dozen nuts on one small (but particular) tree. When I returned to that tree yesterday, there was not one nut still on it. I dug up the one I had buried, and I will open it soon to see if it was ripe or not. I don’t think it was though, as the color was definitely on the yellow end of the spectrum rather than the darker brown I would expect.

The bottom line is that I have decided to teach the Electricity honor instead. I just don’t have the quantities of plants needed here to support a troop of kids.

Beth and I took Penny for a walk down to Sandogardy Pond this afternoon after lunch. On the way I saw some asters in bloom.

Aster

I won’t even try to put a species name on these. There are hundreds of possibilities when it comes to asters, and I have not equipped myself to distinguish them.

When we got there, I went poking around the dock to see if I could find any arrowhead (Sagitaria graminea), and to my surprise, the floating heart (Nymphoides cordata) had bloomed.

Floating Heart (Nymphoides cordata)

I took several shots and then moved a little farther up the shore away from the dock when I saw a pretty large snake lying motionless in the pickerelweed. I watched it for a bit trying to decided if it was alive or not (it was so large I wasn’t even sure if it was real). I followed his body with my eyes until I found his head, and then I was sure that he was both real and alive, so I maneuvered my camera into position spooking him. So instead of a nice shot showing how big this guy was, all I could get was his head:

Northern Water Snake (Nerodia sipedon)

I went over to the other side of the dock and then walked up the shoreline where there was a lot of pickerelweed. I got these shots:

Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata)

And a close-up of one of the blossoms:

Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata)

Pickerelweed is trystylus, meaning that the styles (the female part of the flower) come in three distinct lengths relative to the length of the stamen (male part). Thus, when a bee comes by, it won’t transfer pollen from the stamen to the style of the same plant. I think that’s pretty cool.

I almost stepped on this little guy:

Bladderwort (Utricularia gibba)

This is one that I first saw last year, and was somehow able to remember its name. If my identification is correct, this is a insectivorous plant. The blossom here is tiny – maybe an eighth of an inch across.

While we were there I also went looking for some Virginia Marsh St Johnswort (Triadenum virginicum). This is another plant that grows near water and blooms in the mid to late summer. It was in bloom the last time I went to Sandogardy, and I took several poor photos of it. Today I wanted to take some better shots, but I was hard pressed to find any with open blossoms. I did not think they quit flowering that quickly. I finally did find one with an open bloom:

Virginia Marsh St Johnswort (Triadenum virginicum)

Beth and I then headed back to the house, and I took a nice two-hour nap. Va woke me for supper, and after we finished that, David asked if I wanted to go to Sandogardy. But of course I did! He didn’t know Beth and I had already been, as he also took a nap after lunch – only he started his well before we did. Beth wanted to join us for a second walk too, and of course, Penny never turns down an opportunity like that.

So off we went. When we got there, I found that the prodigious number of Virginia Marsh St Johnswort that is indeed there had all opened their blossoms while I slept. So I took a few more shots.

T. virginicum

This one came out half decent (though if I ever fix my tripod mount on this camera, I’m sure I could do better). Pretty much all my shots this summer have been hand-held.

 

Patridge Berry

Partridge Berry (Mitchella repens)

The vernal pools in my woods are growing larger. It’s getting difficult to navigate back there because there are so many of them. The snow is still a foot deep, except where these pools form. There are many of them covering my trail now, so I do a lot of meandering as I go through. Penny is clearly a more mature dog now (she turns four next month), because she also chooses to go around them, even when chasing sticks. Last year she would plow headlong into the water, but not so this year.

The photo above shows a couple species. The one sporting a red berry is partridge berry (Mitchella repens) which has shown up in this blog on many occasions in the past. But off the the right side I see the leathery leaf of a trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens). These will be among the first plant to flower, and I do look forward to seeing them in bloom again. One thing I know about them this year, that I did not know last year, it that the blossoms are edible. No preparation required – just pop them in your mouth. I will try that as soon as I see some, and will report on my impressions when I have some impressions to report!

I liked this photo because of the way the snow was sparkling. The partridge berry is growing under the water as I have observed them doing in previous years. It seems to not bother them at all.

I still haven’t seen any amphibians, but I have not stopped looking yet either. NH Fish and Game has a new site for reporting amphibian (and insect, and reptile, and mammal, and bird) sightings. I’m looking forward to doing that as well.

 

Snake and Bug

The city came and scooped out our catchment pond again. They did a MUCH better job this time than last time around. Thanks to the cob-job they did last year, it has been nearly empty all this year, and that means… no frogs.

Well, I did see two frogs in there today, but that’s most likely because we got some rain last night and the pond had refilled. But they have thus far been unable to hatch a clutch of eggs, so the numbers are way down.

On my way to the pond today, I saw this garter snake perched atop some honeysuckle.

Garter Snake

I usually have a hard time photographing snakes. It’s hard to get close to them, but this one just sat there and let me move the camera to within six inches or so. It tasted my air and decided I wasn’t too alarming. I guess.

Nearby I found another columbine blossom. These had already finished this year, so i was astounded to find another bloom. In fact, that same plant has ripe seed pods on it.

Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)

It’s about half the length of the first round of blooms, but I’ll take what I can get!

When I left the house this morning I noticed a half dozen different species of insect perched on my front door. I took pictures of them all, but this one was the most bizarre:

I have not yet tried to identify it. Check out those legs!

In other news… My puzzle geocache went live today. Within one hour, someone had solved it (but did not go out and find it yet). Within two hours another person did the same thing. They both had kind things to say about my puzzle. 🙂 Within four hours two more people solved it and found it. Looks like it might have landed on the easy side of the spectrum, but everyone seems to be having fun solving it anyhow. I can be happy with a fun puzzle.

 

Bugs, turtles, and flowers

Last night after it had been in the fridge a while, I took out my lady Dobson fly and took several shots of her on a white sheet of paper. I like this one best, because she has such shiny eyes.

Dobsonfly (Corydalus cornutus)

What a beautiful girl! She was about three inches long.

On the way home from work we saw a turtle in the middle of the road. I wasn’t sure if it had been hit or not, but since there are several species in New Hampshire that Fish and Game is interested in, I had Jonathan turn around and park near it. Yeah, it had been freshly hit (but not by us). It’s a bit of a gross photo, so if you’re squeamish, don’t click the “more” thing.

 

Camping at the Washington Adventist Church

I led my pathfinder club no a campout this weekend. The weather was gorgeous, which is a little unusual; it usually rains when we camp.

We camped at the Washington Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is an historic place actually. It is the church where Adventists first observed the seventh day as Sabbath. Before that time, there were Adventists, and there were people who kept Sabbath on Saturday, but this was the first time those two beliefs came together.

They do not have electricity there, nor do they have plumbing. But they do have outhouses. We had to haul all our water there.

When we arrived and opened the trailer, I started hauling stuff out and almost immediately saw a couple of ticks. Uh oh. So before proceeding any further, I found the insect repellent and sprayed myself. Then I started spraying other kids.

We got all the tents pitched, made supper, and lit a campfire. I let all the kids stay up until 10:30. I figure tired kids sleep better. I let the teens stay up another hour or so, and we all turned in around 11:30.

The past couple of times we camped here, we tried to use a few large tents. That doesn’t work well, because we have to pitch them in the woods, and it’s hard to find a clear, level spot big enough to pitch a large tent. This time I changed strategies, and decided we would use many small tents instead. I was able to scare up enough three-man tents so that everyone either had a tent to himself, or was sharing with another kid.

At about 1:30 am one of the kids in a tent near mine woke up and started asking “Is it breakfast time yet?” I hollered to him to be quite, and that it was still the middle of the night. He did quiet down, and I went back to sleep.

The sun came up at 5:15. Some of the kids got up shortly before then. They proceeded to wake the rest of the kids, who all started running around yelling and screaming and having a good old time.

I did not sleep a wink after that, but I did not get up either. Not until 7:00 anyhow. I doubt that any of them had a timepiece of any kind. It was light outside, and they were awake, and that was all that seemed to matter to them.

After breakfast I told them that since they got up before 5:00am, they were going to have to go to bed early. If they would not sleep in the morning, I would make sure they slept at night.

We went on a long hike Saturday afteroon. It was uphill all the way there and most of the way back. Or so it seemed. We met a convoy consisting of two Humvees and a military truck on the “road,” and I’m using that term fairly loosely. Maybe it used to be a road, but I wouldn’t want to drive on it. It was pretty OK for hiking though. Apparently it’s pretty OK for training the Guardsmen to drive Humvees over unimproved roads.

We got back from that, took a short rest, and then set out for a geocache, which was another mile and a half away (and a mile and a half back). It wasn’t uphill in both directions, but it was unambiguously uphill on the way there. There was plenty of boulder scrambling involved. After on particularly steep incline we came to a rock cairn (these are common on the hiking trails in these parts), and curled up under a rock was a nice-sized milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum). We found the cache, and then headed back to camp.

Then we had some dinner, and the kids ran around in the dark playing some variant of hide and seek. I don’t think any two of them had the same notion of what the rules were, but they did all seem to enjoy it pretty substantially.

I sent them to bed at 9:30 (as promised), and the teens and I turned in at around 10:30. At about 11:00 the coyotes started howling. I’m sure they were within a hundred yards of our site. They were pretty loud, and I sure thought it was pretty cool.

Shortly after that I heard something that did scare – ATV’s. They came roaring onto the site full-throttle and went tearing down the trail in the dark. Some of our tents were pitched partly on the trail, and I was afraid that these idiots (who were ignoring the “NO MOTORCYCLES OR ATVS” signs posted all over the place) were probably drunk, and maybe wouldn’t expect to find a tent on the trail. They didn’t venture onto any of the trails near us though. They did tear around for about an hour, and then went roaring outta there. I’ll take a pack of coyotes over a pack of ATV’s any day.

The kids miraculously slept until after 7:00. I didn’t wake up myself until 7:05. I don’t know if it was the dressing down I gave them the previous morning, or if it was the six miles of hiking uphill both ways, but they were all pretty dead to the world when I came around waking them up at a decent hour.

Connected with the Washington Adventist Church is a mile-long loop trail called The Sabbath Trail. There are 32 markers along the trail chronicling the history of Sabbath observance. I had offered our club’s services to do some trail maintenance while we were there. That was partly meant as payment for permission to camp, and partly because I like to teach the kids the meaning of community service. Anyhow, the plan was for us to work on the trail on Sunday morning. We did that after breakfast, lopping off thousands of branches overhanging the trail (at face level and lower) and hauling them into the woods. It took a couple of hours to do that, and the trail was far easier to navigate afterwords. I am secretly pleased that we did not do this before the ATVs arrived. I suppose ATVs have their uses. I just wish they were not used as a form of recreation.

They are noisy, they pollute, and I would rather not share the trail with them. They also do not extend the benefits of exercise to those who ride them. Similarly, I prefer to canoe and kayak over a jet ski, and I intend to take up snowshoeing before I ever ride on a snowmobile.

After we cleaned up the trail, we made lunch, ate it, and began breaking camp. That went pretty quickly. I really like using lots of small tents verses fewer large ones. They are easier to pitch and easier to strike, and the kids require very little supervision to do either. When we use big tents, it always ends up with two kids doing the work and three or four others watching them unhelpfully. This is much nicer.

So! That was my big adventure. I think it was a positive experience for everyone in my club. We won’t camp again (as a club at least) until September, as the Pathfinder year has almost drawn to a close.

 

More April Snow Showers?

The forecast for tonight is for us to get about an inch of snow. The North Country (i.e. Northern New Hampshire) is supposed to get 6-10 inches. Wow.

Fish and Game got back to me today and confirmed the identity of the wood turtle I saw yesterday. They also thanked me for the report, so yay me!

I noticed today that Google Maps finally has updated imagery of my house. Their previous imagery was taken before the house was built (construction started pretty close to six years ago). What was also painfully evident in the new imagery is the logging that was done about a quarter mile from my house. I still grieve for those woods, but at the same time, they weren’t mine, and I wouldn’t want anyone telling me I couldn’t cut them down if they were mine. Here’s what it looks like from space:

The green arrow is the forest that is now a field. The red A is a random something Google decided to plop down on the map. I’m not going to try to figure out how to make it go away, so you’ll hafta live with it I guess. It’s not my house.

It has been raining here all day, so I didn’t spend much time out in it. I did meet Jonathan at Dos Amigos for lunch, and then we headed back to the office together after we got our burritos. On the way I stopped and took a couple of photos of the redbud blossoms:

Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis)

I walked around for five or ten minutes in the woods looking for starflowers (Trientalis borealis), but didn’t find any. Yesterday when I was doing that though, I found a book belonging to the Concord Public Library. One of the neighbor kids left it there. Beth has been playing with these kids a lot lately, and they all seem pretty nice. But I don’t think I’ll loan them any books! I made the kid who claimed it take it in his house right now. A couple weeks ago I found three pairs of kid’s footwear (two pairs of shoes and a pair of boots) by our swingset. They had been rained on. I had Beth deliver them to their house, and their mom was pretty relieved to know what had been happening to her kid’s shoes. I don’t know which kid they belonged to, but they were all the same size, and I’m guessing the inventory might have been significant;y depleted at that point.

 

Wood Turtle & Gaywings

Today just before lunch Va called me to let me know that Beth’s lunch was still on the counter top. Today was Beth’s first day back to school following Spring Break, and I guess we weren’t quite back in the swing of things. There was no time for Va to drive to the school before lunch, so I went to Taco Bell and got her something. I also grabbed something for myself. I got to the school just as Beth was leaving the classroom to get her lunchbox, so I guess that was cutting it pretty close.

I went to a small park near the church and ate there. This is a tiny little park, and you would never know it was there unless you knew it was there. So to speak. I parked the car and walked down to a little oxbow. There is a beaver lodge there, so I sat near it hoping to see some beavers. I saw a couple of Canada geese and dozens of redwing blackbirds, but no beavers.

Then I heard something crashing in the trees behind me. I turned around, but didn’t see anything. I watched. Pretty soon, I could see bushes shaking, but I still couldn’t see what was making all the ruckus. I got out my camera, stood up, and walked over there. Here’s what I saw:

Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta)

I know that NH Fish & Game has an interest in turtles – they have a reporting program for reptiles and amphibians. Some species are endangered with extirpation in these parts, and F&G really wants to know about them. Well, I had no idea what kind of turtle I was looking at, so I took several photos, getting as close as I dared (a snapping turtle can remove a finger in an instant). I also had the GPS with me from our geocaching run on Saturday, so I turned that on, waited for it to lock, and then jotted down the coordinates.

When I got back to the office, I checked the F&G website. From the turtles they had listed there (complete with photos and identification tips), I decided that it was most likely a Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) – and that’s one fo the species F&G cares deeply about. So I sent in a report, complete with the photo above and the latitude and longitude.

I haven’t heard back from them, and I’m not sure I will. They can check it out if they so desire. But I sure thought it was cool seeing one. I never expected to see one on “the list.”

When I got home, I tramped through the woods some more. The gaywings (Polygala paucifolia) I wrote about yesterday have indeed opened now.

Gaywings (Polygala paucifolia)

Can you see the propeller, fuselage, and wings?

After that I worked a bit more on Beth’s cabin. I managed to get two more logs laid and fitted. It’s coming along.